The Senate Intelligence Committee Has Finally Dropped Its Investigation Into Zero Dark Thirty

Just a day after Zero Dark Thirty foundered at the Oscars, taking
just a single technical prize, the high-profile US senate
investigation that may have helped scupper the drama's awards
season has been quietly dropped.

With Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal having previously won best
film in 2010 for The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty – about the hunt for
Osama bin Laden – was one of the early frontrunners for this
year's Oscars and took many of the critics' prizes that preface
the bigger awards ceremonies. But then disquiet grew over the
film's depiction of the CIA's alleged use of torture in the hunt
for the leader of al-Qaida.

In January the US Senate intelligence committee launched an
investigation into whether Bigelow and Boal were granted
"inappropriate access" to classified CIA material after the
committee's Democratic chair Dianne Feinstein and member John
McCain, the former Republican US presidential candidate,
expressed concern about Zero Dark Thirty's torture scenes. In an
article on the Guardian website Naomi Wolf later compared Bigelow with the Nazi
propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.

The film soon became a political football, with the film-makers
furiously defending their right to include fictional elements.
"It's a movie. I've been saying from the beginning it's a movie,"
Boal said last month. "That shouldn't be too confusing. It's in
cinemas and if it's not totally obvious, a CIA agent wasn't
really an Australian [Jason Clarke] that was on a lot of TV shows
and Jessica Chastain isn't really a CIA agent; she's a very
talented actress. But I think most American audiences understand
that." Speaking at the New York Film Critics Circle awards, where
she won best director, Bigelow said: "I thankfully want to say
that I'm standing in a room of people who understand that
depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever
portray inhumane practices; no author could ever write about
them; and no film-maker could ever delve into the knotty subjects
of our time."

When the Oscar nominees were announced on 10 January, Bigelow
surprisingly missed out on a nod for best director and her film
was left to compete only for best picture, best original
screenwriting (Boal), best actress (Chastain) and two editing
prizes. On Sunday night, Chastain lost out to Silver Linings Playbook's Jennifer Lawrence and Boal
was defeated by Django Unchained's Quentin Tarantino. Zero Dark
Thirty ultimately had to be content with a single gong for best
sound editing, in a tie with James Bond movie Skyfall.